There has been plenty to relish during the Mariinsky’s three-week visit to London this year – but, at the same time, have we had to make too many allowances for a company of this stature? Don Quixote was a super performance of an emotionally and intellectually vapid ballet; in Swan Lake, a gallant prince was let down by an irritating production and a diffident Odette-Odile; and not even a radiantly on-form Diana Vishneva could compensate for the so-so steps and punishing score in Anna Karenina.

Although very enjoyable overall, the Contrasts mixed bill was tainted by the inclusion of the curious Carmen Suite (and that, by a stolidly un-charismatic Escamillo) and also by flutters of imperfection in the corps in the Grand Pas from Paquita. What’s more, it also feels perverse to have given Viktoria Tereshkina four out of five opening nights. An unfortunate injury was partly to blame for this, but only partly – a company with such a wellspring of talent shouldn’t be leaning so heavily on one ballerina, however capable she may be.

Viktoria TereshkinaCredit:
Alastair Muir

Certainly, Thursday night’s La Bayadère, with which the company is wrapping this season, was decidedly alpha-gamma, and arguably more gamma than alpha. On the positive side, in this rendering of Petipa’s 1877 fantasy-romance, there was a stellar performance from Kimin Kim as the warrior Solor, betrothed to the calculating Rajah’s daughter Gamzatti, but illicitly in love with Nikiya, the temple dancer of the title. Calling to mind the former Mariinsky star Igor Zelensky in his pomp (there is no higher praise), the Korean-born principal combined noble height and line with a gasp-inducing jump, ice-skater-fast turns and marvellous precision – a warrior indeed, and a virile and credibly smitten partner to the doomed heroine.

As Nikiya, Tereshkina (they might as well rename the company the Tereshkinsky) danced with her customary pin-sharp musicality and professionalism, and she and Kim – who launched the season together in Don Quixote – made a commendably tight unit. However, the casting at times felt topsy-turvy.

First soloist Nadezhda Batoeva can’t yet fill a stage with movement the way Tereshkina does – the latter’s “projection” is strikingly good. But she’s a pretty dancer and a lustrous presence: the dewy femininity and wisp of vulnerability that she brought to the supposed villainess might have better suited Nikiya, whereas Tereshkina’s sinewy frame, more angular face and diamond-hard confidence often felt more Gamzatti-like. In the Act I Scene 2 struggle between them, Nikiya was the more domineering and frightening of the two – the wrong way round, surely.

Kimin Kim and Viktoria TereshkinaCredit:
Alastair Muir

Elsewhere in the cast, Grigory Popov etched long, lean lines in the air as the fakir, so much so that you wished he’d also been able to take on the gymnastic cameo role of the Golden Idol, which fell flat in Vasily Tkachenko’s delivery. The latter was the sort of missed opportunity you really don’t expect of the Mariinsky, and on Thursday night the same repeatedly went for the corps.

In fairness, they pulled out all the stops for the famous descent down the ramp in the Kingdom of the Shades, Solor’s ravishingly simple hallucination scene. This is traditionally the highlight of any performance of Bayadère, and for five minutes or so, the hairs duly prickled. But once the 32 shades were on the flat, they seemed to – as it were – take their foot off the pedal, and little inconsistencies in bearing and positioning started to creep in. Similarly, hands and arms were often at decidedly varying angles in the Act I ensembles, while the large-scale dances with fans and (I think) parrots were a virtual free-for-all in terms of which way the props were pointing.

And oh, those poor, mercilessly brandished parrots. The RSPB would have raged had these fowl been remotely real, and they were typical of a pantomimically outdated production that groans with suspect fauna. The hunters return on a life-size but concrete-rigid elephant-on-wheels, ferrying with them a beleagured, misshapen soft-toy tiger that’s more Bagpuss than Shere Khan. The snake with which Gamzatti kills Nikiya looks straight out of a joke shop, and when a reluctant rubber cobra starts wibbling its way out of a charmer’s basket, the world of Carry On feels far too near.

Viktoria Tereshkina and Kimin KimCredit:
Alastair Muir

This is all to say that one tittered far too often at a story that is emphatically not a comedy, in a production that – despite its nicely drawn sets – lets down the narrative in another, fundamental way. The Kingdom of the Shades is an exquisite episode that ups the emotional ante but essentially puts the plot on hold, and, in a traditional Bayadère, it comes – satisfyingly – in the middle. However, the Soviet-era reworking on offer here puts it at the end, ditching a significant swathe of the narrative (which now basically screeches to a halt at the end of Act II), making the whole thing feel like a symphony with two fast movements followed by one slow. There was some fantastic dancing from the leads in Act III on Thursday, but it all felt in the wrong place.

So, a season of mixed blessings, and one that, despite some wonderful individual performances, only rarely matched the smart programming and effervescent, across-the-board brilliance that the Bolshoi brought to the same stage last year. One awaits the venerable Mariinsky’s return (probably just a few years hence) with great interest, and hopes for a little rolling up of sleeves in the meantime.